TRAINING MEN AS NAVAL GUNNERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 48, 19 May 1927, Page 9

TRAINING MEN AS NAVAL GUNNERS

BUILDING A TARGET SLIP BEING CONSTRUCTED For a naval gunner must keep his eye “in.” Down at Freeman’s Bay reclamation there is being constructed a slip on which a maritime curiosity for New Zealand waters will soon be born. It will be a huge battle practice target for the New Zealand Naval Division’s firing practices in the Hauraki Gulf. Built from the Admiralty’s latest design, it will have a length of 164 feet and a beam of 11 feet, dimensions which will give it complete steadiness in the water. The raft will be constructed of 12inch by 12-inch timbers with a wooden deck and a steel bottom. But the actual target will be a lattice-work firing screen 30 feet high. But that is looking forward to September, or later. In the meantime 36 huge piles have to be driven to form the foundation of the slip. The date of the actual completion of the work depends on how the materials, all of which are to be imported, come to hand. The contractors, Bailey and Lowe, hope to get a start on the naval “straw man” in July and in September it may be ship-shape and ready for the water. Then it will slide off into the harbour waters and be snaked round into the Gulf, where thousands of pounds worth of good ammunition will be hurled at thousands of pounds worth of good shipbuilding. For a naval gunner must keep his eye in.